Why Every Woman Should Care About the Equal Pay Debate

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When I started my career in the legal field, the industry was largely driven by lockstep promotions and salaries that I assumed applied to everyone, men and women alike. The thought of negotiating my salary not only seemed inappropriate, but impossible. I gratefully took what was offered, believing that salaries were determined solely by education and experience. It's hard to believe someone as naive as I was managed to survive in the legal world for as long as I did. I quickly learned the playing field wasn't level. At one point I was offered a job with a new firm and took the first offer they made. A male colleague of mine, with a year less experience, played hard to get. He negotiated a $10,000 signing bonus. I did not. I never did find out what his salary was, but I wonder if it was also higher than mine.

It surprises me that I was blind to the disparities in men's and women's pay. I grew up in the '70s and '80s hearing the sobering statistic that women earn approximately 75 cents for every dollar men earn for doing the same work. I stored that number in the back of my head. It seemed important in the way that adult things seem important to kids — you knew people were riled up, but not entirely sure why. Then somewhere along the line I stopped paying attention. I grew up and got a job and got complacent and thought that women had closed the gap. I thought pay discrepancies were a thing of the past — a prior generation's failure, rectified by hard work, advanced degrees and a shattered glass ceiling.

Today, April 8, is Equal Pay Day, and while it's an opportunity to become part of a nationwide effort to advocate for gender equality by calling on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, it's sad that such a day is necessary. Equal Pay Day is the day every year that marks when the average woman's pay catches up to what her male counterpart made the prior year. Given that Equal Pay Day falls on April 8 this year, that means that it takes the average woman 463 days to earn what a man takes home in 365. Think about that. Ninety-eight extra days. A little over three months of additional work to bring home the same salary as an equally educated, equally experienced man. This goes beyond signing bonuses and missed opportunities. This speaks to a fundamental imbalance in the way we value women's work and women's financial security.

It's now 2014 and the pay gap I heard about as a child hasn't been eliminated. In fact, it's been stagnant for the past decade. The average female worker today makes 23 percent less than a man in the same position — or about 77 cents on the dollar. If we stay on our current course, that gap won't close until 2058. Fifty-four years. That means that today's female college graduates can look forward to an entire career during which their earning potential will fail to match that of their male peers. The gap is greater for women of color, it grows with age, and it exists in nearly every profession. Higher education doesn't appear to eliminate it, nor does being childless. Simply being a woman means that you will likely earn less than a man holding the same position and doing the same work. That means less money in your retirement accounts and less in Social Security. Couple that with longer life spans and women are facing greater financial instability than men in the long term as well.

We should be outraged. We should be incensed. We should be in the streets.

Yet all I hear is a quiet murmur.

Maybe it's because we're too busy working.

Of course there are advocates, chief among them Lilly Ledbetter, a 75-year-old dynamo who got royally screwed during her 20 years at General Motors and then, again, one might argue, by the Supreme Court and who joined President Obama today as he signed two executive orders about equal pay. But the voices of young working women seem oddly absent from this debate. Maybe they don't understand the impact of the wage gap or how insidious and entrenched it is. I certainly didn't when I was their age. Perhaps they are worried about losing jobs or rocking the boat. Maybe they're afraid of being seen as shrill or difficult or demanding. Being scared of what people think of you, however, is a poor reason not to demand more than what is being offered.

Whatever the reason for the silence, we can't escape the reality that after decades of progress in a variety of areas, women still do not earn the same as men for doing the same work. It is unconscionable to continue to disadvantage ourselves by pretending we are financially and economically equal. We are not. Are women better off than they were 50 years ago? Probably. Have individual women achieved parity or equity with some men? Yes. Are women as a group treated equally to men? No. The wage gap is just one indicator of that inequality. And given that groups in power (in this instance, men) don't generally agitate for change because the status quo gives them financial, social, and political advantages, we can't look to them for a solution. It's up to us. And while flexibility is important, it shouldn't be a replacement for pay — this shouldn't an either/or situation.

So I encourage all of us to do something, anything, to insist that women be paid fairly. There are a hundreds of ways to take a stand. You can get political. Write to your federal and state representatives, march, vote, or get vocal on social media. You can stand up for yourself and don't discount your accomplishments and value. You can negotiate your salary. You should negotiate your salary.You can ask for transparency in wages and apply for jobs with companies that make equal pay a priority. You can get informed. What you can't do is nothing. If that's your choice, the time between now and 2058 is looking pretty bleak.